


Five Things That Never Happened to Jarod

by AstroGirl



Category: The Pretender
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four ways canon could have been even angstier, and one reminder that it was angsty enough already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Never Happened to Jarod

**Author's Note:**

> Call this a PG-13 at least, for some (non-pornographic) sexual content, violence, and ouchy themes and topics.
> 
> I was still in the middle of watching season 2 when I wrote this... Since it's pretty much all AU all the time, there's nothing in it that's problematic in terms of later canon, but I'm sure I would have written it differently if I'd waited until after I'd seen the rest of the series. If nothing else, canon itself developed some interesting ways of exploring things that never happened to Jarod, mainly by having them happen to other people instead. Heck, at least one of these seems downright prescient to me in that respect, looking back on it now.

1.

Sex is _wonderful_. It's one of the few things he's ever done that he isn't an instant expert at, but it doesn't matter, because Nia is gentle, and beautiful, and for once in his life, he doesn't have to pretend to be anything other than who he is.

But as soon as they finish the second time, he knows that something is wrong. Nia can tell, too. She must see it on his face. "Jarod? What is it?" Her gaze follows his downward, and she watches as he extends his fingers and gently squeezes the tip of the condom. A tiny hole gapes open, and fluid trickles out. Not nearly as much fluid as ought to be there.

"It must be a manufacturing defect," he says. His voice, he distantly realizes, is quavering a little. "It ought to have been detectable with a careful inspection. I should have--"

"Oh." She looks up at him. She seems remarkably calm. "Do you have any diseases I should know about?"

"No." This, at least, he is sure of.

"Well, neither do I, as far as I know." She smiles and strokes his hair. "Don't worry too much. We can get checked later, but it's probably fine."

"But..." He reaches out his hand, his fingers sliding against the softness of her skin until his palm presses flat against her belly. He imagines tiny pieces of him carrying the secret code of his identity deep inside her, and he swallows hard.

She rests her hand against his, their fingers intertwining. "It's probably fine," she says again. "Don't _worry_."

**

He comes back, two months later. Longer than he'd like, but they've been difficult months. And she ought to be certain by now, one way or the other.

"You really _do _worry too much," she tells him, smiling. "No, Jarod, there isn't anything you ought to know."

He is very good at knowing when people are lying. This time, he tries to believe that his instincts are wrong. But the Centre is breathing down his neck, and in the end, he doesn't have nearly enough time to find out for sure.

**

He stays away for another eight months. Bad months: he sleeps too little and dreams too much, picks up the phone to call Sydney and puts it down again, over and over. He can't chance leading them back to her, not now. Not even if whatever it is that makes him special isn't in his genes.

He lays down false trails, covers up the real ones so that even he probably couldn't follow them, and arrives at her house at last, in the middle of the night.

She looks different. Tireder. But her house is exactly the same. And even before she opens her mouth, he knows what she's going to say.

"I'm sorry, Jarod. You're right, I should have told you. But I just... I couldn't take care of a baby. And I _know_ you couldn't, not the way things are for you now. I thought it would be easier for you not to know."

He tries to speak, but only a thin, dry sound comes out.

"It's safe," she says, her hands making tiny circles on his shoulders. "It's all right. I gave it up. It was the right thing to do. It will grow up with someone to take care of it. I promise."

"Where..." he manages finally. "Who...?"

"I don't know," she says. "Honestly, I don't know."

She puts her arms around him and holds him close. It doesn't help at all.  
2.

"Of course I knew Jarod," says the family's next-door neighbor to the reporter. "I was here the day his parents brought him home. He was such a nice little boy then, so sweet, so serious. I even talked to the lady from the adoption agency, or whatever it was. She said he'd been in some sort of special institution, had a very rough time of it, apparently. I think she even implied that he'd maybe been abused there. And you could tell he missed his real parents, poor thing, but was just _so_ happy to have a family again... It was lovely for a while, it really was, at least until his father -- his adopted father, I mean -- started drinking. He was never what I'd call a _friendly_ man, really, but he was a decent man, until the whiskey got hold of him. After that... Oh, it was _awful_. I'd hear them over there sometimes, screaming and breaking things. I called the police more than once, but of course they never really did anything. You know how it is.

"And what it did to that poor boy... You could see him, over the years, getting, I don't know... Darker. Darker and colder. I wish I could say I was surprised by what he did, but I'm not. Especially not after how the man beat up his poor mother, that last time. He was always very protective of his mother, was Jarod. He probably couldn't bear the thought of losing another one. And, well, I know it isn't right to speak ill of the dead, but I can't help but think that the old drunk brought it on himself. Anybody could see what he was doing to that boy, but not him. He just kept right on _pushing_.

"It's such a terrible, terrible shame, though. He was such a _smart_ child. He probably could have become something really special, with the right parental guidance."  
3.

It's taken careful timing, unexpected inside help, a strong measure of desperation, and more luck than Sydney has ever thought to experience in his lifetime, but at last the two of them are free of the Centre, together, and, after five hundred miles and three changes of identity, apparently unpursued.

But they are both entirely exhausted. He can see the mental and physical after-effects of a sustained adrenalin rush taking their toll on Jarod, and he can easily imagine what the results of today's stress must look like on his own face. He has plans for tomorrow -- vague plans, of necessity, but serviceable ones, he hopes. For now, though, they both need sleep more than anything else.

The tiny fleabag motel room features only one bed, and Jarod curls up on it next to him, looking terribly small, and even younger than his years. He's been wonderful today, brave and clever, but this must be quite a shock to him, finding himself suddenly outside the small, isolated world that's been all he's known for the past few years; Sydney understands.

Moving forward a little on the bed, he gently puts his arms around the child and pulls him close. Jarod instantly nestles against him, as if desperate for the warmth or for human contact, and Sydney realizes with a sudden lump in his throat that it's the first time he's ever really held the boy.

"It's all right," he says. "I'll keep you safe. I promise."

"I know you will," comes a small, muffled voice against his chest, and he can feel something in there growing tighter, or looser. He isn't sure which.

"I love you, Jarod," he says softly. He's a little surprised to find himself capable of forming the words, after all this time. "I... need you to know that."

"I love you, too, Sydney," Jarod says, and Sydney wonders how it can sound like such a simple and easy thing, coming from him.

He kisses the top of the boy's head. "You need to go to sleep now." But Jarod is already drifting off in his arms.

**

Sydney wakes suddenly, to a scuffling sound somewhere across the room. It's Jarod, he realizes, shuffling across the worn carpet to peer through a chink in the curtains.

"Sydney," the boy whispers, low and urgent. "There's men with guns outside. Two of them, I think... No. Three, at least."

"Jarod!" he hisses. "Get away from the window!" But Jarod has worked through situations like this in a dozen different sims, and he's already moving, crouched low against the wall. The curtains haven't even stirred.

For a moment Sydney looks at him, and allows himself to feel a ridiculous surge of hope. Perhaps this child, this amazing, genius child can get them both out of this. Perhaps he can succeed where Sydney has failed. Perhaps...

There are noises at the door now. And there are surely many more than three of them.

"Sydney? Are they going to take us back to the Centre?" Jarod's voice is trembling, and his expression, however carefully controlled, is still that of a child. A frightened child, looking to an adult for reassurance.

"No," he says. It is, in its way, the truth. Surely they have orders to return only one of them to the Centre. Sydney, they will simply kill. And then Jarod will go to Raines.

Sydney picks up the gun from the bedside table. "Jarod," he says, "do you trust me?"

"Yes," says Jarod, and Sydney is not sure whether there is hesitation in his voice or not.

"Then come here," Sydney says softly, "and close your eyes."

Trusting, or perhaps only well-conditioned to obey, he does. And he does not open his eyes as Sydney lifts the gun to his temple.

"Don't worry," he says. "I will not let them take you. You're going to be with your parents soon, Jarod."

Jarod nods, his fine child's hair brushing the muzzle of the gun. And Sydney pulls the trigger.

The door bursts open with a crash that's almost as loud as the report of the firearm, but the sweepers are too late. Sydney has already repositioned the gun. This choice, at least, he is going to make for himself.

It only hurts for a moment.  
4.

Jarod stands on the edge of the bridge and looks down at the man dangling beneath him. "Feeling scared, are you? Is this how she felt, do you think? The woman you killed?"

"Please!" The man's bound hands scrabble against the rope, try to pull his body upward, fail. "Please. Please, don't hurt me, don't kill me, please..."

"What gives you the right?" Jarod demands. "Hmm? What makes you think you deserve the right to take people's lives, to take them away from their _families_?"

"Please... Yes, all right, I did it! I did it! But you... you don't have to do this! I'll do anything you want! Anything!"

Jarod bends down, hauls on the rope... and cuts it.

"_I_ decide who lives and who dies," he tells the broken body. "Not you."  
5.

Today's sim -- a negotiation scenario that shows great promise at reducing potential hostage deaths if properly applied -- runs late, as expected, so Jarod and Sydney leave directly from the Centre for their weekend at the cabin. It's not something they do nearly often enough, really, as they both tend to be more than a little workaholic. It's probably a good thing they have Uncle Jacob around to call them on it, and, more than that, to make sure they follow through, rather than simply agreeing that vacations are nice and then diving right back into their work.

He's certainly right this time, at least. Sitting here on the calm, quiet lake, just the three of them, talking idly about nothing in particular, undisturbed by Centre business or, for that matter, by much in the way of fish... It's _nice_.

It certainly seems to be relaxing Jacob; he's fallen asleep in his chair again, fishing pole tilting lazily in his limp and lolling hands. Jarod looks closely at him for a moment, as he sometimes does, pondering the fascinating similarities and differences between the brothers. The physical differences, at least, are particularly obvious today: Jacob is wearing shorts, and the scar on his leg is still shiny and pale, three decades after the accident.

Jarod's heard the story behind that scar -- or at least some approximate version of the story -- many times since he was a child: the "accident" that nearly killed Jacob and Sydney and turned out to be no accident at all, the palace coup that followed once the truth came out, the way things at the Centre changed after that... Well, that last part, he remembers, sort of, but it's difficult to bring to mind what life was like at the Centre, back in the bad old days.

Sydney, with his usual trick of somehow knowing exactly where Jarod's mind has gone, breaks the comfortable silence at last. "Thinking about the past again, Jarod?"

Jarod smiles. "A little."

Sydney reels his line in and casts it out again. "Do you still regret," he says quietly, "that we were never able to locate your real parents?"

Jarod gives this question the consideration it deserves. It's been a long time since they've talked about it. "I'd be lying," he says finally, "if I said no. It would be nice to have met them, to know who they are. But it doesn't eat at me, Sydney. I think you know that."

Sydney nods. He has that slight smile on his face, the one that's half happy and half sad and that always makes Jarod want to hug him. But since there are fishing rods in the way, and since he doesn't particularly feel like getting up yet, he smiles back instead.

"Look at this," Jarod says, waving a hand around to take in the lake, the sky, the sleeping Jacob, Sydney himself, and even, somewhere, the distant, bustling Centre. "What do you think I could have had that would be better than this? No, I'm happy with the family I've got."

Sydney scoots his chair towards Jarod's, reaches over, and pats his hand. The noise of his movement must have finally disturbed Jacob, because he blinks and stirs.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Ages," says Sydney, smiling at him. "We're about to lose the sunlight."

"Oh, well," says Jacob. "It was a nice nap. Pleasant dreams."

Sydney glances at the sky, then reels his line in again. He stands and clasps Jarod on the shoulder. "All right, son," he says. "Pack up your things, and let's go home."


End file.
